New tool removes guns from domestic violence suspects

Narada and Cynthia Jean Goodrum had a tumultuous relationship. In the end, he dragged her by the hair into their Bexar County house, shot her to death, fled and then killed himself while on the run in Las Vegas.

Photo By Helen L. Montoya/San Antonio Express-News

This is the western Bexar County home where Cynthia Jean Goodrum was shot to death. She’d been dragged into the house by the hair and was killed in the kitchen.

Photo By Christian Cazares/KVVU Las Vegas

Narada Goodrum took his own life when U.S. marshals and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers, who’d been tracking his movements, arrived at a motel near the gambling capital’s famed Strip to serve a murder warrant on him.

In the days before Cynthia Jean Goodrum's slaying Dec. 27, her husband purchased several firearms, an ominous sign in a relationship that long had been tumultuous.

The devoted mother and nurse had filed for divorce to end her second marriage to Narada Goodrum. The looming threat from her husband was laid out in her court petition: Narada began to amass an arsenal after Cynthia, 34, asked for a divorce.

Bexar County deputies investigated a disturbance between the Goodrums a week earlier. No arrests were made, but deputies did remove a handgun that was in plain view.

“She was very scared, and she wanted to know what to do,” said Mark Thompson, Cynthia Goodrum's lawyer.

This deadly mix of guns and domestic violence is all too common, and was behind at least 10 of the 88 city homicides last year. Courts long have recognized the peril, and assailants who are convicted of domestic assault are prohibited by federal law from possessing or purchasing firearms.

Now local courts are employing a new tool before trial by confiscating guns from some arrestees in domestic violence incidents.

Cynthia, who was pregnant at the time, had sought a temporary restraining order against Narada, 33. But before he could be served with papers, Narada dragged Cynthia by the hair into their house on the west side of Bexar County and shot her to death in the kitchen.

Last week, Narada took his own life while on the run in Las Vegas.

The new court strategy, adopted in June, is just one step — but an important one — in confronting the problem. National and local experts say that if an abuser has access to a firearm or weapon, the chance of that person killing someone increases dramatically.

So far, Bexar County Magistrate Judge Michael Ugarte said he's signed about 10 of those orders, but he added that not every domestic violence call involves a weapon.

“We use it on a case-by-case basis,” Ugarte said. “Sometimes, family violence situations get out of hand and people get injured. If you remove the instrument that can escalate it, it may not get worse than it already is.”

Thompson, Cynthia Goodrum's lawyer, said removing firearms from a potentially violent person makes sense, though it is clearly not a panacea in every case.

Narada Goodrum had yet to be arrested, so the courts wouldn't have intervened under the new policy.

“If someone's ready to kill his pregnant wife, then he's going to do it no matter what,” Thompson said. “Maybe not having weapons would slow him down, but I've even seen a case of a man killing a woman by setting her on fire.”

PEACE Initiative executive director and co-founder Patricia Castillo said the effects of the firearms surrender order have yet to be seen.

“It will be awhile before we see the impact, but the fact that we're even pursuing it, to me, is groundbreaking,” said Castillo, whose local nonprofit is dedicated to fighting domestic violence. “I'm excited, I'm glad we're there. Domestic violence and weapons is a deadly combination.”

While the order is relatively new here, it's long been in practice by other Texas judges.

Nationally, judges are trained to adopt firearms surrender, and order weapons removal for those named in protective orders, as best practices in decreasing family violence, but the tools aren't widespread.

“You don't see these kinds of restrictions in place on a broader scale as a condition of bail,” said Professor Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “This is a different kind of scenario — it could be a lifesaving measure to keep guns away from domestic violence perpetrators.”

Bexar County family court Judge Monica Gonzalez got the idea after she met Macias at a domestic violence seminar last year. She quickly got to work on the initiative, with the support of the other local family court judge, Genie Wright.

“Firearms in a family violence case are the No. 1 weapon used if someone is murdered,” Gonzalez said. “When you start looking at the statistics, you see the number of fatalities because of a firearm, and so I initiated that something be done in these cases.”

New tools to fight abuse

Over the years, local authorities have adopted several measures to try to curb domestic violence, and Police Chief William McManus said the changes have led to a 3 percent decrease in family violence cases overall this year.

“We're all over this, simply because it's a very serious issue that has to be taken seriously,” McManus said. “We place great emphasis on preventing and responding to family violence incidents.”

A turning point came in 2007, when police changed the way they address the initial domestic violence call. One policy change was that, instead of filing a warrant for a suspect at-large, police began actively looking for the person who had fled the scene. Then in 2009, the San Antonio Police Department added several two-person teams dedicated to such cases. Recently, detectives were added to the department's family violence unit.

Homicides in San Antonio tied to family violence are up slightly, from nine in 2011. Of the 2012 victims, six were men reportedly killed by a son or a partner's son, and three were children. The sole female victim, Tammy Lydia Hernandez, 25, allegedly was slain by her boyfriend. Cynthia Goodrum's death occurred outside city limits in Bexar County, where totals from 2012 weren't immediately available.

When a domestic violence incident is reported, officers responding to the call can remove weapons if they are involved in the crime or if they're seen in plain view. Victims meet with SAPD's crisis response team, McManus said, and through interviews with them, officers evaluate the “lethality factor,” or the chance of a homicide occurring.

A protective order may be issued, and judges may order firearms removal in that order, officials said.

If an arrest is made, judges can ask the arrested person to voluntarily surrender firearms, Ugarte said, adding that so far, no one has volunteered to give up their weapons. If the person refuses, Ugarte will order the firearms surrendered as a condition of the arrest.

But trusting suspects' words isn't enough: If they say they don't have weapons, they must sign a sworn affidavit stating so, Ugarte said.

To comply with the order, an arrested person must designate someone to take the firearms to police or the Sheriff's Office. The weapons will be held and can be retrieved once the case is closed, pending the outcome of any criminal charges.

Domestic violence cases can be very volatile and emotional, said First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg, whose office simply approved Gonzalez's proposal. Judges independently set the conditions of someone's bail, he said.

“It's an effort to prevent future violence,” he said, “and we'll do anything that we can do to help people in these types of emotional situations. We certainly think this is a good idea.”

While Macias and Denton agree the order is helpful in addressing domestic violence, no one is quite sure how well that measure alone has worked. Stopping abuse is most effective when done collaboratively, they and experts say.

“It's hard to give a performance measure, and hard to pick out one factor,” Denton said, “but there's no question that having a gun in the house increases the potential for domestic violence homicides.”

Family violence homicides are down in Austin, Denton said. And twice, the FBI has called him when someone who was prohibited from buying a firearm tried to do so, he said.

Macias said an abuse suspect recently was arrested in El Paso in a domestic violence incident, and a protective order was issued against him. She found out that he'd given his arsenal to his mother upon learning his firearms would be removed, so Macias summoned the man's mother to testify in court.

“She said there were 15 weapons, and said they were under her bed,” Macias said. “She was an older woman. I ordered the weapons surrendered, and she brought them into the Police Department within 48 hours.”

'A good thing'

Experts say the multifaceted approaches have been effective, and that keeping abusers away from firearms helps.

“Research does show that making it more difficult for abusers to get firearms leads to a reduction in inmate partner homicides. With this coming out of Texas, that definitely seems a little bit surprising,” said Elizabeth Richardson Vigdor, a professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.

The National Rifle Association did not return three phone calls seeking a comment for this article. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, there were 518,625 active concealed handgun license holders in the state on Dec. 31, 2011.

Judges here and elsewhere say they haven't had much backlash to firearms surrender from people concerned about gun owners' rights.

“I really salute Judge Gonzalez, because she just ran with this,” Macias said. “It's difficult in Texas to talk about removing firearms, but you have to be clear that it's not an anti-gun initiative. For us, it's been well-received.”

Sixty-five percent of women who are killed by their significant others in Texas are killed by a firearm, Castillo said, and three women die daily in the United States as a result of domestic violence. An American Journal of Public Health article from July 2003 stated that the biggest effect on domestic violence homicide rates is accessibility to a firearm.

“Everybody agrees this is a good thing,” said Wright. “If we can get to these people before it escalates, maybe it will never escalate. What we're trying to do is avoid fatalities.”